Raid 1 Solution In the UK

[acearchie]

Hi guys,

I am coming to the point where I am filling my 500GB that is on my hard drive.

Most of this is due to the fact that I take a lot of photo's both for pleasure and for money so it has come to the point where I will need to offload some.

At the moment I have one copy of my lightroom catalogue on my computer and another clone on a 1tb portable drive that I carry around with me.

Is the best suggestion to buy a Raid 1 array (looking at this WD 2x2tb) and then offloading the archived photo's, say everything shot at least a year ago and therefore not needed now to this drive.

This will mean that I will have a Raid 1 copy of the archive photos and still have a backup of my current photos through the portable drive. The Raid 1 backup will also stay at my parents house which I visit a few times a month.

Just to point out once the older photo's are offloaded onto the Raid 1 drive I will delete them from my computer and therefore they will be removed from my portable back up drive as it just copies exactly what is in my lightroom folder.

Does this sound alright?

 

[flynz4]

Hi guys,

I am coming to the point where I am filling my 500GB that is on my hard drive.

Most of this is due to the fact that I take a lot of photo's both for pleasure and for money so it has come to the point where I will need to offload some.

At the moment I have one copy of my lightroom catalogue on my computer and another clone on a 1tb portable drive that I carry around with me.

Is the best suggestion to buy a Raid 1 array (looking at this WD 2x2tb) and then offloading the archived photo's, say everything shot at least a year ago and therefore not needed now to this drive.

This will mean that I will have a Raid 1 copy of the archive photos and still have a backup of my current photos through the portable drive. The Raid 1 backup will also stay at my parents house which I visit a few times a month.

Just to point out once the older photo's are offloaded onto the Raid 1 drive I will delete them from my computer and therefore they will be removed from my portable back up drive as it just copies exactly what is in my lightroom folder.

Does this sound alright?

The problem is that you will still only have 1 copy of your archived photos. For me, this would not be acceptable.

RAID1 is not backup. Personally... I would rather have two independent copies of my archived photos... stored in two different locations.

/Jim

 

[acearchie]

The problem is that you will still only have 1 copy of your archived photos. For me, this would not be acceptable.

RAID1 is not backup. Personally... I would rather have two independent copies of my archived photos... stored in two different locations.

/Jim

This is only for the absolute worse case that if the house burnt down etc.?

Being a student I am already scraping the bottom of the bank account to buy this and touchwood my house won't burn down!

 

[flynz4]

This is only for the absolute worse case that if the house burnt down etc.?

Being a student I am already scraping the bottom of the bank account to buy this and touchwood my house won't burn down!

It seems that you want the RAID 1 as some sort of redundancy. I would suggest that you completely disregard any perceived advantage of RAID1 over just a single drive. There are many reasons why a RAID1 drive could fail, and that you lose all of your data. It goes way beyond a house burning down.

Given that you can probably buy two USB attached HDDs for the same price as one RAID1 drive... I would strongly recommend that you buy two independent drives. Archive your data to both... store them in different locations. Now you have dual copies of your data which allows you to recover your data in case one device goes bad.

No extra money (probably less money)... and MUCH better disaster recover.

The bottom line is to NEVER trust your data to one device... EVER. Do NOT think of RAID 1 as "two devices". RAID1 is still "one device".

Two of any of These will save you money... and add significant protection to your data.

/Jim

 

[acearchie]

Two of any of These will save you money... and add significant protection to your data.

/Jim

Hi Jim,

I have now cancelled my Raid 1 device and will probably purchase two of these. Which will offer me the same space but fortunately cost less and present itself as two separate drives.

Is the most effective way to drag to one drive and then drag to the other? I probably won't be backing up so often so I will probably just leave it to update both.

Thanks for your input!

 

[flynz4]

Hi Jim,

I have now cancelled my Raid 1 device and will probably purchase two of these. Which will offer me the same space but fortunately cost less and present itself as two separate drives.

Is the most effective way to drag to one drive and then drag to the other? I probably won't be backing up so often so I will probably just leave it to update both.

Thanks for your input!

I primarily use dual automated backup of my main computer... once locally via Time Machine, and a second to the cloud using Crashplan+. I like automated backups... and these keep me covered for 100% of my data.

Despite the above (and because I am on the lunatic fringe of backup)... I also perform manual backup to a pair of HDDs, like you are about to do. This allows me to recover my media very quickly in case of an emergency... and it gives me a 3rd backup of my digital assets. I always strive keep at least one of the two drives in the remote location at any given time. They are NEVER both in my house at the same time. Once I made my first two backups... my procedure is as follows:

1) One HDD is locked in my desk drawer at work... the second drive is sitting on a shelf at home.
2) Whenever I make significant changes to my media library (ex: Importing new pictures... or editing lots of photos)... I update the HDD sitting at home... it now matches my main library on my iMac.
3) I immediately lock it in in my car (just in case my house burns down overnight... or if the local junkie performs a smash&grab), and then take it to work the next morning, swap drives, and bring the old one home where it sits on the shelf waiting for the next update.
4) Repeat as necessary... triggered from a significant change in my library.

This ensures that at any given time... there are three copies of my library up until the previous major library update. It also means that there are two copies of my most recent data updates... and one is outside of the premises.

I use Carbon Copy Cloner to perform the backups of my media onto these two drives. There are many other good sync programs as well. CCC performs incremental backups... so they complete VERY quickly... usually under a few minutes. If you do not want to buy one of these backup programs... you can just use finder and erase, and then copy to the HDD. This will take much longer, so I prefer using a program that does incremental copy operations.

Personally... I ONLY put my media on these drives (photos, camcorder videos, etc). I never put documents or anything else that can result in identity theft. The reason is because these HDD's live out in the wild, and are fairly easily stollen.

It is good to see you taking precautions. At least once a month, I am contacted by friends or family who have lost everything due to a HDD crash, or other catastrophe.

/Jim

 

[acearchie]

It is good to see you taking precautions. At least once a month, I am contacted by friends or family who have lost everything due to a HDD crash, or other catastrophe.

/Jim

Thanks for all your advice. I am really only buying the drives to have as an archive so I might as well do it in as safe a way as possible. Plus the money I have saved has now gone to upgrading the RAM in my desktop so I have you to thank for that!

Your system sounds pretty safe. Is it all personal files or is your profession somehow reliant on digital media?

 

[flynz4]

Your system sounds pretty safe. Is it all personal files or is your profession somehow reliant on digital media?

All personal. All of my corporate files are backed up by my company.

My digital assets are very valuable to me. In priority order:

1) Digital photos
2) Personal home movies
3) Nothing else... except documents that are double backed up.

Realistically... everything else (even #3) is probably reproducible. Music, movies etc can all be re-acquired. The vast majority of my documents would have little to no impact if lost. My pictures and home movies are irreplaceable.

/Jim